JMJT
Jesus
August 19, 1894
My dear little sister,
It is therefore for the last time that I am obliged to write to you in society!... Caramel.
I am not surprised by the storm raging in Caen, F. and J. have chosen a path so different from ours that they cannot understand the sublimity of our vocation!... But whoever laughs last will laugh ... After this life of a day they will understand which of us or them will have been the most privileged...
How your miraculous catch has gently touched us... How these little delicacies make us feel that our dear Father is close to us! after a death of 5 years what a joy to find him still the same, looking as before for the means to please us. Oh ! how he will return to his Céline the care she lavished on him!... It was he who made your vocation a success in such a short time; now that he is a pure spirit it is easy for him to go and find priests and bishops, so he has not had so much trouble for his darling Céline as for his poor little queen!...
I am very happy, my dear little Sister, that you do not experience any perceptible attraction in coming to Carmel, it is a delicacy of Jesus who wants to receive a present from you. He knows that it is much sweeter to give than to receive. We only have the short moment of life to give to the good God... and He is already about to say: "Now my turn..." What happiness to suffer for the One who loves us madly and to look crazy in the eyes of the world. We judge others by ourselves, and as the world is mad it naturally thinks that it is we who are mad!...
But after all, we are not the first, the only crime which was reproached to Jesus by Herod was to be mad and I think like him!... yes it was madness to seek the poor little hearts of mortals to make them his thrones, He the King of Glory who is seated on the cherubim... He whose presence cannot fill the Heavens... Our Beloved was mad to come to earth to seek sinners to make them his friends, his intimates, his fellows, He who was perfectly happy with the two adorable people of the Trinity!... We will never be able to do for Him the follies that He did for us and our actions will not deserve this name , for these are only very reasonable acts and far below what our love would like to accomplish. It is therefore the world that is foolish since it ignores what Jesus did to save it, it is he who is a hoarder who seduces souls and leads them to fountains without water...
Nor are we lazy, prodigal. Jesus defended us in the person of Magdalene. He was at the table, Marthe served, Lazare ate with Him and the disciples. For Mary, she was not thinking of taking food but of pleasing the One she loved, so she took a vase filled with a perfume of great price and poured it on the head of Jesus breaking the vase, then the whole house was perfumed with the liqueur, but the apostles murmured against Madeleine... It is just as for us, the most fervent Christians, the priests find that we are exaggerated, that we should serve with Marthe instead of consecrating to Jesus the vases of our lives with the perfumes that are contained there... And yet, what does it matter that our vases are broken since Jesus is consoled and that in spite of him the world is obliged to smell the perfumes which are exhaled from them and which serve to purify the poisoned air that he constantly breathes.
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The nurse would like you to find in Caen half a bottle of Tisserand's antihaemorrhagic water, 2f50. If there are only whole bottles, don't take any, there are some here in Lisieux.
Sr. M. from the SC would like 7 or 8 nutcrackers.
